Thursday, June 13, 2013

What if boys got pregnant:? A concept as old as I am


That's the question implied by Chicago's new anti-teen-pregnancy campaign.

“The point was to get people’s attention and get conversation started about teen pregnancy and teen births, and how they really affect a community,” Chicago Department of Health spokesperson Brian Richardson told the Daily News.

The ads are running on transit and near high schools with high rates of teen pregnancy.


While attention-getting, I'm not sure the ads really get the full value of the message across. I'm not sure any ad campaign can get boys to be more responsible, but imagine targeting these to girls and saying "If it was him who could get pregnant, don't you think he'd want to use a condom?" or something like that.


But at least these ads, while presenting teen pregnancy as an unwanted consequence of teen sex, don't try to heap shame on teen parents the way New York City did with their campaign. Even if the concept behind the Chicago campaign is as old as I am:


Yep, that's the famous "pregnant man" ad by Jeremy Sinclair of Cramer Saatchi (Predecessor of Saatchi & Saatchi) circa 1970 (via Creative Review). If you're going to borrow creative ideas, they might as well be this classic.

4 comments:

  1. "I'm not sure any ad campaign can get boys to be more responsible"

    That's a troublesome implication.

    In fact, I think the idea that young men are out-of-control, hormone-addled dogs who can't take responsibility for anything is the crux of the problem here.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My point is that an ad campaign has little effect, whatever you think of boys.

      Delete
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